Since they have tagged the Jacksonville strain, the other states that encounter it should send the bills to the Florida governor, he’s the one that let it spread.

This should be a great boost to tourism – Visit Florida (after you get your TB vaccination). 😈

The sheer stupidity literally astounds me, leaves me agape with astonishment that someone could be so stupid and shortsighted. And Bryan, the way things are going, they’re going to manage to breed a strain of TB that *no* antibiotics will kill no matter how much of a combination you hit it with, and if that mutation happens to be of one of the more virulent strains… (SHUDDER). Anybody who took a freshman level biology course in college and actually paid attention (big if, I know) can figure that one out, if they’re willing to simply apply what they learned. Only an ideologue willing to ignore reality in pursuit of his ideology could say that this is a good idea, breeding superbugs that is. I remember another nation that put ideology above reality… hmm… my friend who spent time as an engineer at Baikonur might have something to say about how well that worked. Hint: The nation he worked for doesn’t exist anymore. And it looks like the USA is spiraling down that death tube the same way… 🙁

The US Public Health Service goes back to 1798, and they have the power of quarantine if they feel it is necessary. I doubt the Fraudster-in-chief or Duval County / Jacksonville politicians would like to see the yellow flags of quarantine encircling the area, but if they don’t do something about the problem, that is a possibility.

If the port is shut down, and the Navy withdraws, they will discover the true cost of the ‘cure’.

TB [consumption] has certainly not avoided the famous or wealthy throughout the years, and taking a half-dozen antibiotics every day for months is not inexpensive, so it would be stupid to ignore the problem and increase the costs of stopping it. The Republicans are just being ‘conservative’, i.e. brain-dead and anti-science in their approach to public health. They apparently believe that anything that might benefit anyone who isn’t in the 1% is socialism, which must be condemned at all costs, including dead Floridians.

The past century has seen the development of the public health field, and only the past three decades have seen the rise to power of people who want to ignore the most basic principles of public health. Some of them argue cost savings: to those, I can only remind them of the small, now defunct coffee house chain, Diedrich, which we all pronounced in the obvious way, and suggest to them that that is where their penny-wisdom regarding public health issues will leave them sooner or later.

– Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

Two of my great grandparents died of TB. My great grandfather contracted it while serving in Asia as part of the Spanish American War. He got the slow version, but my great grandmother caught the fast version while caring for him.

I remember being tested for TB multiple times during my childhood, especially when we went overseas and returned, but also as part of the standard testing before going to school down here. I’m fairly certain that they don’t do that anymore. It went away like the smallpox vaccination.

Republicans don’t want to ‘waste money’ on preventative maintenance of the infrastructure, nor on preventative health services. They obviously don’t understand that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’.

The US keeps going backwards, and the politicians don’t give a damn. This is going to be just like AIDS – it only affects the underclasses, so there is no need to doing anything about it. They just don’t care.